Gerda Christian

Gerda Daranowski (13 December 1913-14 April 1997) was one of Adolf Hitler's private secretaries before and during World War II.

Biography
Gerda Daranowski was born in Berlin, German Empire on 13 December 1913, and she worked for cosmetics businesswoman Elizabeth Arden before being employed by Adolf Hitler at the request of two of Hitler's overworked secretaries in 1937. She was originally engaged to Hitler's driver Erich Kempka, but she later married Luftwaffe officer Eckhard Christian instead. She helped to look after Joseph and Magda Goebbels' children in the Fuhrerbunker during the last weeks of the war, and Christian, Traudl Junge, and Hitler always ate lunch together. During one conversation, the two secretaries requested cyanide capsules from Hitler, and Hitler gave capsules to both of them. On 2 May 1945, Christian and several other Germans escaping the Fuhrerbunker were captured by the Red Army, and she divorced her husband in 1946 for not being in the bunker with her. She moved to Dusseldorf and worked at the Hotel Eden, and she befriended propagandist Werner Naumann. In 1953, she was arrested by the British Army for being a member of a neo-Nazi group, and she died of cancer in 1997 at the age of 83.